Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to email processing and, in particular, to techniques to update an unwanted email message (or “spam”) filter, e.g., based on tracking various forms of information collecting during user navigation.
Background of the Related Art
The use of email messages is commonplace for home and business. Email messages are used by individuals to keep in touch with and communicate with other users. Additionally, email messages provide a medium to collaborate and exchange documents. Unsolicited email messages are often received by users in their inboxes. These types of messages are also referred to as junk email, or unsolicited bulk email (or, more commonly, “spam”). The amount of undesired email messages sent to users has grown over time. With the amount of undesired email messages present, users often have to wade through numerous email messages to find the ones that they wish to read. While not a security risk per se, spam is one of the most common nuisances on the Internet. Spam is a broad term for e-mail messages of a commercial nature which are sent to a large number of users who had not requested the messages. Spam is disadvantageous because it consumes a significant quantity of computing resources. Spam must also frequently be manually deleted, which costs people a significant amount of time.
Many users of email use blacklists and whitelists included within their email software to control undesired spam, or junk, email from undesired email sources. A blacklist is a list of email addresses or domain names from which email is blocked. A whitelist is a list of email addresses or domain names from which email is allowed.
Typically, an email user's email software may provide a feature whereby if an email is received from an email address/domain name, a button or a link can be manually selected by a user to have the email address of the received email added to either a blacklist or a whitelist, that is to block or to allow email from that address in the future. In other cases, programs exist to mass-manage a large number of email and domain addresses and automatically blacklist or whitelist them. In either case, a user must still examine the email address and domain name of the received email to determine whether the email address/domain name should be whitelisted or blacklisted. There are also email programs that include a predefined, but regularly updated, list of email addresses/domain names that are known to be sources of spam email. When using such an email program, when a received email includes an address/domain name that matches an entry on the spam list, the received email is automatically blacklisted for the user by the email program.
However, there are times when a user is performing an online activity, such as making an online purchase on a website or registering for a blog, a newsletter or an online forum, such that the user desires and expects to receive emails from that site/domain. Unless the user adds the email address/domain name of that website manually to the whitelist of their email program or browser, emails from that source may end up being automatically tagged as spam, automatically added to their email blacklist, and unnecessarily blocked from being received in the future. Also, the user may not anticipate that an email address may be from a domain different from that of the actual website which was visited by the user, while still desiring to receive email from that other domain. This problem often occurs in the situation when a user registers to a site but then receives a confirmation email from some other domain that the user does not recognize; in response, the user may decide to register again and again until he or she gives up.
There remains a need to provide enhanced techniques for managing email that addresses these and related problems.